


(Dallas) Ex Machina

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (Dallas 2014), Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Dystopia, M/M, Ridiculous Awkwardness, Terrible BDSM, awkward dating, even more terrible dirty talk, talking about feelings, terrible flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:15:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22586209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: There were many uses for a law enforcement A.I., but Detective Javert knew thatthiswasn’t supposed to be one of them.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean, Javert/Rivette (Les Misérables), Javert/Rivette/Jean Valjean
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	(Dallas) Ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwelveLeagues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwelveLeagues/gifts).



> Cw for canon-typical suicide attempt.

_Budget cuts_ , Javert surmised, when he first got the news about his new partner.

It wasn’t what the Superintendent said, of course. Unlike his predecessor, Gisquet wasn’t much for direct talk. He was prone to speechifying— an indulgence which went with the too-large office desk, on which Gisquet kept an ostentatious picture of himself and the deputy mayor, Cass Perrier, at some ritzy golf event, with the floor-to-ceiling windows and views of the replica Eiffel Tower and the rest of the downtown skyline— and this was what he said instead:

“It’ll boost policing comity between our cities! Paris, Texas, and Paris, France have worked side by side since the French Revolution, this will take our cooperation to the next level. And who better to have for this first test case than you, Detective!”

Javert pretended to study the memo on his police-issue wrist-pad so he didn’t need to keep looking at Gisquet’s face. 

_Rivette_ , the memo said, and furnished a C.V. with proficiencies in cybersecurity and facial recognition. It also provided a holopic of a pale, narrow-faced man in his early 40s, with sad eyes and a moustache that looked like it was designed in the last century. 

“I don’t need a partner,” he said, eventually. 

He’d thought the city was on the same page as he was about this. It had been three years since his old partner had quit the force, and, owing to what Javert had assumed were budget cuts, no one had assigned Javert a replacement. He preferred it that way. In those three years he had made more arrests than anyone else working the homeland security division in the Paris, Texas PD. As he’d discovered as a rookie guard in Tomball Federal Penitentiary in Harris County, and later cutting his teeth as sheriff of a small town upstate, he worked best alone.

Gisquet didn’t disagree, exactly; what he said was, “Then don’t think of him as one, Detective. He’s a weapon programmed to crack codes and track communication patterns, which the Paris Prefecture has loaned to us to help with the war against anarchy.” 

Javert considered this. The war on anarchy was being fought on the state as well as federal level, in real space as well as online. Javert had just been assigned to Paris’s counter-anarchy task force — to bleeding-heart liberals, the anarchists were fighting for the little guy against kleptocrats who controlled their lives and their livelihoods, but as far as Javert and his superiors were concerned, the perps were terrorists, out to bring down civilization with violent means. He could do with an extra pair of eyes out there, as well as with an extra weapon.

He scrolled through the memo again. No backstory, no provenance, no first name. To be fair, this was no different from the rest of the cops on the counter-anarchy beat. 

The button at the end of the memo was live. ACKNOWLEDGE, it read, in blinking red letters. 

Eventually Javert activated it, muttering, “So, is he real?”

The wrist-pad emitted a bright flash of light, as did all the terminals in the Superintendent’s office, and suddenly a third figure joined them in the room. 

It was tallish, thinnish, dressed in an antique navy wool uniform that looked like it had been worn by policemen in the days of the French Revolution. It was mostly solid, except for the slight, tell-tale fuzziness around the edges that indicated it was a very high-res 3D hologram made of light particles and not of flesh and blood. 

The image of this old-school French policeman inclined his head deferentially.

“I’m as real as you think I am, sir.”

*

Javert was deeply skeptical, but in the weeks to come, he caught himself thinking of Rivette as very real.

Rivette was the perfect deputy, which was to be expected from a being programmed to perform that function. He patrolled the streets at Javert’s heels and rode shotgun in Javert’s unmarked car from point to point, participating in interrogations and arrests. Now that Javert was carrying a double load, his old cases plus the new counter-anarchy assignments, he had twice the amount of report-reading and paperwork, and Rivette helped him manage it efficiently, plugging directly into the precinct’s grid without the need for wrist-pad or terminal access. Best of all, he completed his tasks competently and didn’t talk back, which Javert appreciated. 

When Javert brought assignments home, Rivette would follow, ready with a pertinent remark and notes for follow-up. And when Javert had completed his own work for the day, Rivette would obediently shut himself down in compliance with the Hague Convention on the Use of Alternative Intelligence in Law Enforcement. 

Under the Convention, all A.I.s deployed in the criminal justice system of signatory nations were programmed to serve a 56-hour work week, and then to spend the rest in mandatory down time off the grid. The memo claimed that this was principally so that A.I.s weren’t further exploited by governments, but according to the footnotes further down the memo in small print, the down time provided a safeguard against A.I. self-aggrandisement that was, post the Japanese android revolution of ’30, seen by the federal government as advisable.

As the weeks went by, Javert realised he had, despite himself, grown used to the familiar presence at his side in its anachronistic navy uniform. It was convenient to have an additional pair of eyes on the streets and an extra pair of hands with the report-filing and a sounding board for his case theories. 

And the apartment did seem less cold when he returned to it in the company of Rivette.

Over the course of the winter, with Rivette’s help, Javert finally concluded the long-running Gueulemer investigation. The night he put the case to bed, he returned to his apartment and opened the vial of high-grade whiskey he’d been saving for a special occasion.

Rivette took his customary seat across from Javert. “Allow me to congratulate you again, sir,” he said, leaning forward in the chair, as if a projection needed a couch in order to make itself comfortable. A beat, and then, the usual, “Will that be all?”

Javert started to say yes, as usual, and then caught sight of Rivette’s dark gaze over the rim of his whiskey glass. On a whim, he lifted his hand, and Rivette halted, on the cusp of fading away into the void.

“Was there something else, sir?”

“Tell me, Rivette, what do you do during your down time?

Rivette answered as thoughtfully as he would have responded to a question about criminal profiling or last week’s arrest report.

“When I’m offline, the tech in the Paris Prefecture reviews my day. If there’s an issue with my performance, or any of my routines, he’ll look into whether my code needs patching. Occasionally the team will recommend enhancements for all co-located law enforcement A.I.s, and then the upgrades will come down the line on the grid during the next working day in France.” 

He paused. “What about you, sir?” 

Javert’s post-work routine hadn’t varied since his days as the sheriff of Mont Roy: an hour with weights and the elliptical trainer, followed by a shower and a solitary dinner delivered by the apartment’s synthesizer, after which he read articles or watched instructional vids, and then went to bed. Occasionally he’d let himself jack off, either in the shower or on the grid, but only if he needed the extra bump of endorphins to get to sleep. 

He told Rivette this, omitting the part about the jacking off. Rivette listened intently. For the first time, Javert realized his A.I. deputy might be curious about the part of Javert’s life he hadn’t thus far been privy to. 

When Javert had finished, Rivette said, thoughtfully, “I understand most policemen in Texas engage in leisure activities, the same as policemen in France. They play sport or watch a game or have a night on the town, engage in social intercourse or physical companionship. But you don’t do those things, sir.”

Javert frowned. He had never before discussed his needs for social intercourse or physical companionship with anyone, and wasn’t going to start with his A.I. partner.

“I prefer to live alone, the same way as I prefer to work alone. I don’t feel a need for social activities. Isn’t this the same with A.I.s?”

Rivette inclined his head, respectfully. “A.I.s don’t need social activities, that’s true. Or physical companionship, either; after all, A.I.s don’t have physical bodies…” He gestured towards Javert. “But you do, sir.” 

Following the gesture, Javert glanced down at himself. His body in its post-work attire looked as strong and solid as it always did. He looked up, and saw his partner staring.

It was probably a trick of the lighting, and there wasn’t really admiration in Rivette’s deferential gaze.

Javert wasn’t familiar with that kind of look, at least when it was directed at himself. The companionship he sought out was mainly of an online nature — incognito chat rooms in the bowels of the grid where you didn’t need to find out your partner’s name or whether they were even real and not a low-level subroutine or an A.I. pretending to be human. 

On the occasions when he’d sought out in-person contact in one of Paris’s many hook-up bars, the encounters with the leather-clad men whom he’d let press against him and jerk off alongside him had been unsatisfying, seeming somehow as dirty as he felt himself.

Alongside these thoughts came the unbidden memories of Mont Roy, and its mayor in his immaculate white suit. The mayor had called himself Madeleine, after the French saint, but this Madeleine had been far from saintly; his real name was Jean Valjean, and he’d been a fugitive who’d been on the run for almost ten years. Javert had let that false name and false modesty fool him, and he had let the fraudster get away.

Of course, this didn’t explain why he thought of Valjean when he spent time with other men, or when he touched himself — why he imagined bringing Valjean to his knees, dirtying that spotless white suit, painting the smooth cheek with his spunk. 

He sat up, abruptly signaling an end to the conversation. 

“Good night, Rivette.”

“Good night, sir,” Rivette said, and he slowly vanished from view, atoms fading until there was nothing left of him in the empty apartment.

*

Javert put the conversation with Rivette out of his mind. In any case, he had little time to mull over it in the next days, filled with post-arrest paperwork and pre-trial meetings with the State’s Attorney’s offices. 

But after Gueulemer was duly charged and remanded, and Javert had the satisfaction of watching the bailiffs drag him away, he was seized with an unfamiliar impulse. As the court adjourned for the day and the attorneys and court officials began to shut down their devices and load up their gear, he addressed Rivette. 

“Deputy, the other day you were wondering what Texas cops get up to for leisure. Why don’t we go take a look?”

Rivette’s expression didn’t change, though his eyes widened a fraction in a way that indicated surprise. Clearly this wasn’t something predicted by the A.I.’s algorithms; Javert could almost see the recalibrating going on behind the bland screen of Rivette’s face. 

“What do you have in mind, sir?” 

What Javert had in mind was a visit to the Depot, the casual dining establishment frequented by the Paris Texas P.D. He’d only visited it once before, when he’d first received his posting to the city, in the company of Superintendent Chabouillet. 

Now, eight years later, the Depot seemed less grand than he remembered it, the neon and chrome strip lighting making its old-fashioned expanse look like some of the seedy bars on the south side of town. The wall screens showed the local ball game play-by-plays, which was legit, and the betting on the Assassin’s Screed interstate tournament, which was less so. 

They found seats at the long chrome-topped bar. Javert ordered an old-fashioned steak and a tumbler of red wine, the same drink that Chabouillet had ordered for him eight years ago. Then he turned to Rivette.

“A.I.s don’t drink, but can I get you something?” 

Rivette said, “Typically, we’d celebrate or unwind by acquiring non-work-related enhancements or experiences. Your bringing me here counts as both, sir; it’s as if you’ve already bought me a drink.” 

Javert laughed despite himself. “This is going to be a much less expensive evening than I thought, Deputy.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.” Rivette looked around the bar, and Javert followed his gaze. 

Off-duty policemen and women filled the room, talking and drinking and placing bets, some in street clothes, some still in the uniform shirt and tie and leather, their weapons holstered at their side. Javert recognized most of the patrons, and knew Rivette could pull the personnel files on the few unfamiliar faces; he realized, also, that he had never exchanged as much as a text message with any of them. 

Though no one was openly staring, Javert knew he and Rivette were on display. There was only one co-located law enforcement A.I. in the state, and he was sitting at Javert’s side. 

For some reason, this filled Javert with the same hot, irritable feeling he occasionally got when subordinates admired his detective-grade weaponry or the commendations on his office desk.

Rivette remarked, “So this is what police officers do in Texas during a night on the town — drinks, conversation, watching the streams of live and online games? And then an expensive bill at the end of the evening?” 

“That covers most of it. Does it look like fun?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, at any rate.” Rivette turned his attention back to Javert. “How about you, sir?”

Javert retorted: “Told you already, I don’t feel the need for social contact. Which is why I haven’t been here in eight years.” Then he paused, feeling the need to add, “But that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying this.” 

Before Javert was compelled to articulate exactly what he was enjoying about the encounter, the server bot arrived with his drink and meal. Rivette watched him eat in silence for a while, before asking, hesitantly, “What were nights out like in Mont Roy?”

Javert wasn’t surprised by the question. Rivette had access to Javert’s personnel file, and would have been as familiar with Javert’s employment history as he’d be with that of the other detectives on the counter-anarchy beat.

“Mont Roy was a much smaller place. You didn’t get crowds like this up there. There wasn’t that much to do, either, there was only one bar, and at the weekend there was the football game that everyone in town showed up to. As the town sheriff, I didn’t want to be unwinding in proximity to the neighbors or to City Hall.”

Case in point: Madeleine had spent his nights at the Mont Roy bar and the town’s weekend game not drinking or betting, but helping the drunks and the fools who’d gambled their wages away. The false mayor had tried his best to implement law and policy reforms that mocked the hard work of law-abiding citizens — that were soft on crime and hard on taxes, that gave handouts to slackers, that undercut the authority of government institutions and tore at the very fabric of their society. 

Javert had been forced to work with Madeleine, even though he’d harbored initial suspicions about the man he’d remembered from Tomball. It had started out as an unpleasant duty, but slowly he'd grown to almost enjoy it; in fact, against his better judgment, he’d even found himself half-believing in some of the mayor’s social reform measures, and reassessing his views on law and order. However, when Madeleine had been shown up as the fraudster he’d been right to suspect all along, Javert had realized he’d been wrong to question Authority and to question his own judgment; he'd sworn then, furiously, that he’d never let himself be fooled that way again.

He told Rivette the full story. After meal and story were complete, Rivette remarked, “Perhaps that’s where your dislike for social contact comes from, sir.”

“Deputy, that’s not an evidence-based conclusion. Some men are just made to work and thrive better on their own.” 

“I see.” And it looked as if Rivette did, at that. Behind his dark gaze there were wheels turning, self-learning algorithms running and recalibrating as the A.I. absorbed all this new information about his partner.

As Javert called for the check and tapped his credit code into the Depot’s payments system, Rivette asked, “So, sir, what happens after the drinks and conversation and billing part of the evening?”

“Would you like to find out?”

Javert had spoken casually, not expecting the flippant remark to come out as suggestively as it did. Rivette frowned. “Are you inviting me to come home with you, Detective?”

It was time for some awkward backpedaling. “I invite you to come home with me every day, Rivette,” Javert pointed out, getting his coat.

“Yes, you do,” Rivette agreed, meekly enough. Then, after he followed Javert out of the restaurant and settled into the front seat of Javert’s vehicle, he added, “You don’t always invite me to stay, though.”

This was an _undeniably_ suggestive remark. Could self-learning algorithms have taught Rivette how to flirt in thirty seconds flat? 

Javert wasn’t sure what to say, and they drove in silence through the streets towards Javert’s apartment, Javert’s heart beating more quickly all the while. 

Finally, when they arrived at the apartment, Javert had to ask. 

“Do you want to stay?”

Rivette said, evenly, “You know I can’t stay for long, sir. If I don’t go offline at 23 hundred, my tech is going to put up a flag.”

This was a clear signal of intent, though Javert had no clue why a law enforcement A.I.’s programming would allow it. If Rivette was a flesh and blood man — and Javert had never invited one to his home before — now would be the time for Javert to respond to the overture by kissing him.

Rivette wasn’t flesh and blood, though, and Javert had to content himself with opening the door to his apartment and inviting him in. 

Once inside, Javert took off his coat and boots, put his billy club and cuffs on the table, tugged his tie loose, and cast himself on the couch. This time Rivette took a seat beside him, sitting so close they were almost touching — would be touching, in fact, if Rivette was made of living matter rather than just particles of light.

“Sir, what would you like me to stay _for_ , exactly? As you know, I don’t have a physical body.”

Javert stared at the lean stretch of Rivette’s figure, and found himself saying, “You don’t need to have a body for companionship. People get off all the time on the grid.”

Rivette leaned closer. “Is that what you do yourself, sir?” 

“Find someone online, tell them what I’d do if they were there with me? Yeah, that’s what I do.” Javert was acutely aware that this time it was different. Rivette wasn’t on the other end of a wrist-pad or terminal, but in the room beside him, watching him unbutton his uniform shirt.

Speaking into Javert’s ear as if he had lips and vocal cords; reaching out a tentative hand that could almost be solid flesh. “What do you tell them to do, sir?”

Javert fought the temptation to close his eyes; he owed his deputy that much. He held Rivette’s gaze as, slowly, he unbuckled his belt and opened his uniform pants. “Nothing they wouldn’t want to do if they were right here,” he said, thickly. “Maybe they’d want to get on their knees and touch what they could, or maybe they’d just want to watch.”

“It’d be enough to watch, sir,” Rivette breathed as Javert took himself in hand and started to stroke.

It felt good, as it always did. Better, for Rivette’s presence, dark eyes and pretty mouth and respectful expression. Javert’s mind didn’t flash back to Madeleine and his white suit; he kept his eyes fixed on Rivette’s. Rivette watched intently as he thrust into his fist and panted for breath and swore as he came all over himself.

“Good, sir?”

“All right,” Javert said. His legs weren’t entirely steady as he got off the couch. He didn’t say anything else to Rivette, but he didn’t take off his wrist-pad when he got into the shower, which meant that his A.I. followed him into the bathroom and watched as he stood under the water for a while.

The apartment was very quiet after Rivette went offline. 

*

Javert had a whole script rehearsed for the awkward morning after, when he returned to the Paris P.D. and found Rivette back online, but it wasn’t needed. Rivette behaved entirely normally, as if the evening at the Depot had never happened. None of the techs in France seemed to have flagged up any of the data downloads from that particular day. As far as Javert could tell, there had also been no complaints about him put in to Gisquet by the French Prefecture. Rivette worked diligently on the new spate of gang robberies, and the anarchist sightings on the north side, and not once did he mention the time they had spent together. 

They were driving on the south side in companionable, post-lunch silence when H.Q. put out the call.

_SUSPECTED ROBBERY ON HOSPITAL BOULEVARD. ALL UNITS TO THE SCENE._

They arrived at the crime scene seconds after the street patrol had gotten the perps on the ground, hands on their head. Javert recognized them: Thenardier, Brujon, Claquesous, and other members of the Patron Minette gang, pulling yet another of their standard cons — to lure some well-meaning easy mark into a trap and then rob him blind. 

Said mark, an older man in a respectable coat and suit, was standing on the side of the street, leaning heavily on the well-dressed young woman at his side. Javert didn’t spare him so much as a glance, preoccupied as he was with gloating over how the great Patron Minette, with their reputation of cleverly evading so many of law enforcement’s best-laid traps, had gotten caught out on a petty robbery. 

“Detective,” Rivette began, and Javert said, “Not now, Rivette. You see this collection of vermin? They feed on society like the sewer rats they are. We’ll bring them to justice today, won’t we?”

“Sir, the gentleman’s run off,” one of the patrolmen said, timidly. Javert whipped around; true enough, the victims had vanished. 

Cursing, he gestured to the patrolmen to go after them, but he knew it was a lost cause. This part of Hospital Boulevard was a rabbit’s warren of run-down buildings and alleys and underground sewer tunnels, and one where cameras and drones never stayed functional for long. 

Rivette looked at Javert reproachfully, but didn’t say anything.

Thenardier piped up from his position on his knees, “Detective, that’s no gentleman. I recognise an old jailbird when I see one; the kind that has a prison tattoo on his chest.”

Javert stood stock-still as realization finally descended. That smooth-shaven head, that slight frame that hid its bull-like strength, that he still saw in his dreams. It had been eight years, and he’d gotten so inured to seeing those flashes of deceptive familiarity on Paris’s streets that when Jean Valjean finally crossed his path once more, he hadn’t immediately recognized him.

It was a lost cause, but that didn’t stop Javert searching, anyway: first on foot and then, when night fell over the city, in the unmarked squad car, scouring the labyrinthian streets for a sign of the man. Beside him, Rivette jacked onto the grid to scan available online footage and chatter in the vicinity, over the half hour before and after the incident, to no avail. Jean Valjean had vanished once again.

‘There’s no online footprint for him, either, sir. Seems our guy’s a ghost,” Rivette said. 

“No kidding. Try another way. There was this factory worker in Mont Roy, Fantine Thibault, who died when we took Valjean into custody. Thibault’s kid Euphrasie ran away from her foster family in Mont Fermay around the time Valjean escaped; odds are this is our girl.”

Unbidden, the image of Valjean came to mind, of the last time Javert had seen him, fierce and elegant in Madeleine’s white suit, standing guard at Fantine’s deathbed. He’d ripped Javert’s own gun out of Javert’s hands, had knocked him flat and escaped. 

Javert had sworn, after, that he’d never let another criminal get away again. The thought that he’d done that again today made him so angry he could barely see straight. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Rivette, when his searches for Euphrasie Thibault drew a blank as well. Javert wasn’t surprised: the old con had learned to cover his tracks online as well as in person.

“Put out the alert on Jean Valjean, have them run it all the way up the chain: State, Feds, Interpol, the works. I’m going to hunt him down and bring him to justice if it’s the last thing I do.”

As Javert drove angrily back to his apartment, Rivette put out the requisite alerts and consulted the databases containing the mayor’s — Valjean’s — history.

“Says here that Madeleine’s factory employed a third of the local populace. He also built schools and hospitals and an affordable housing district and shelters for juveniles and drug addicts, is that right? Begging your pardon, sir, but it sounds like he did some good in Mont Roy.”

Javert remembered working with the mayor on those juvie and pothead shelters. He ground his teeth together to blot out the insidious memory. 

“That is not the point. The point is: Valjean was a criminal, a parole violator, a fraudster. He didn’t belong among honest citizens, he belonged in jail. Every moment he’s free, he’s a danger to our society.”

Rivette followed Javert into his apartment, and watched as Javert poured himself a very stiff drink. 

Finally, he said, “Sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, escaping from custody is a serious offence, but the case’s been cold for eight years — there’s not even a federal arrest warrant out. And he’s already been punished: nineteen years for a minor offense, which seems long even by Texan standards. I know you have history from Mont Roy, but what’s special about the Valjean case?” 

“What’s special about it? What’s _special_?” Javert slammed his drink down, and, across from him, the A.I. actually flinched. “That man may have served his time, but he didn’t learn his lesson. He made a mockery of the law. He made a mockery of _me_. He needs to be punished.”

Again, the tantalizing images of Valjean flooded through him, before he could stop himself: Valjean in his pristine white suit, on his knees like the Patron Minette gang had been this afternoon, dark eyes filled with defeat, hands clasped on his head — and then of Javert himself stepping forward, billy club in hand, ready to rain blows down on that strong body that was bowed in surrender. 

Rivette drew closer. A.I.s might self-learn to display emotions like fear or nervousness, but there was none of that in his focused gaze. 

Somehow, Javert’s original rage and frustration had become something else. Rivette’s eyes narrowed, and Javert knew the A.I. could see it in the change in his breathing, and in the heightened color of his skin.

In a quiet, respectful voice: “And you’d be doing the punishing yourself, sir?”

This was enough to light the match, and to set everything on fire. 

“Down on the floor,” Javert barked, taking hold of his club for real, and Rivette slid slowly to his knees.

Of course he’d never strike a fellow officer. Of course, if he struck at Rivette, the club would pass straight through the deputy’s incorporeal form.

Of course, Rivette wasn’t the one he really wanted to strike. Or, for that matter, the one he really wanted to have on his knees.

Sick at heart, miserably hard under his uniform, Javert threw the billy club to the ground and unzipped his trousers. His purple-red dick was already leaking as he started, angrily, to stroke.

Rivette looked up at him, eyes very intent. If Javert squinted, he could almost pretend they were the mayor’s dark eyes, staring up through long lashes, sullen and sorrowful and submitting to him at last.

“He’d deserve it,” Javert said, his voice strange and tight. Valjean wasn’t a good man, despite the good Rivette thought he might have done; he deserved everything the criminal justice system would throw at him, everything Javert could administer himself when he finally had Valjean in his custody.

“Does it matter?” Rivette murmured. Still on his knees, he reached out his hand and placed it on Javert’s thigh. 

Maybe it was a trick of Javert’s brain, or maybe the terminals in Javert’s apartment were boosting Rivette’s feed somehow, but Javert could almost feel the heat and pressure of Rivette’s insubstantial fingers through the cloth. 

It was enough to make him come — explosive and shuddering, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting, and all over Rivette’s face. The blots of white hissed and sizzled as they passed through the hologram, painting streaks down the projected image of Rivette’s face and mouth, as if the A.I. was weeping. 

_Does it matter?_ Of course it did. If Valjean didn’t deserve to be hunted and punished, didn’t deserve to kneel like a dog and take what was coming to him …

Coming down from his post-orgasm high, Javert was aware of the sick feeling in his stomach. He’d have liked to blame it on the whiskey, but he hadn’t drunk nearly enough of it for that.

Was all this really about what he wanted from Valjean — from all those men who weren’t Valjean — and from Rivette himself?

“That’ll be all for the day,” Javert muttered, tore the wrist-pad from his arm, and staggered into his terminal-dark bedroom, where Rivette couldn’t follow.

*

The urgent memo came in on his living room terminal the next morning. 

ALL COUNTER-ANARCHIST ASSETS: CODE ORANGE.  
GRID ACTIVITY/DRONE FOOTAGE ANALYSIS SUGGESTS UNREST IMMINENT IN MULTIPLE STATES.  
>>>IN PARIS, TEXAS: AREAS NORTH OF CITY HALL.  
SITREP IN-PERSON MEETING AT P.D. AT 0800.

Under this message, several memos down, was the note that Thenardier and Claquesous had once again managed to slip away from police custody. No reason was stated.

Javert drove to the precinct, cursing under his breath. The situation room was already filled with his task force colleagues, including, courtesy of the in-room terminals, Rivette. Javert couldn’t look at him. 

He approached Gisquet instead. “Sir, you’ve got me staking out City Hall, where there’ve been zero reports of unrest. I understand Patron-Minette’s escaped. Permission to go looking for them instead?”

“No,” Gisquet said. He looked distracted, which Javert guessed was understandable. “I’ll handle Patron Minette. And I’ve changed my mind — we need someone to go undercover in the district near the Corinthian feed mill. I’ll arrange for Supplies to get your gear, Detective.”

As Gisquet turned brusquely away and hurried from the room, Rivette accosted Javert diffidently.

“Sir, you’re not wearing your wrist-pad.”

Javert had left it on his kitchen table. “Going into deep cover, don’t want to look like a cop,” he said, by way of excuse.

Javert headed downstairs to Supplies, where he was assigned nondescript street clothes, a red beret he’d seen anarchist sympathizers wear, a civilian-issue wrist-band, and a small firearm. 

Rivette followed him effortlessly: after all, the precinct was full of live screens. But he wouldn’t be able to do that so easily in the open. When Javert finished putting on his gear and headed to the precinct exit, he found Rivette, dressed in modern civvies, standing in his way.

“What are you doing?”

“Coming with you, sir.”

Javert felt a hot rush of several emotions, the foremost of which was irritation. 

“Deputy, you’re only going to get me killed. Besides, those guys might kill you too — weren’t you the one who flagged the intel on the anarchists’ anti-A.I. defences? You need to stay here. I’ll check in with you at eighteen hundred.”

“Detective —” Rivette started to say, as Javert strode deliberately through him and out of the door.

Javert drove his civilian jalopy to the feedmill neighborhood, and spent the better part of the day getting to know the inside of the bars. There were no terminals, no screens, though occasionally a drone would fly overhead. 

He considered sending photos of the dirty, suspicious bar patrons back to the precinct, but the connection on his civilian wrist-band was lousy and there wasn’t any real intel of value anyway.

He was on his fifth drink at a run-down café called the Muse when the news broke the old-fashioned way. Some kid ran into the place and said, “The General’s dead!”

At once the café burst into activity. Men and women leaped to their feet and pulled devices and weapons from under tables and floor-boards and from behind the bar. A handsome bearded man in a flak jacket stood at the center of the storm of activity. Javert surreptitiously took a photo and sent it to the precinct. Then he beckoned the bartender over. “What’s the play?”

“You sure you wanna get involved, old timer? There’s nothing for you here.”

Knowledge from months of immersive research kicked in. _The General_ could only be a reference to Max Lamarck, the ex-Marine behind a leading Doomsday-prep underground website that had been a rallying point for anarchists across the country. Lamarck had been in a coma at Saint Luke’s since February. 

“Are you kidding me? The government’s screwed us over most of all. Maybe if we got rid of them, us old timers might get a fair shake.”

The bartender paused, looking him up and down reassessingly. “Then maybe you’d like to join up. Go ask Combeferre over there if they’ll take you.”

Javert walked over to the serious-looking man in the red beret, which was how he was drawn into the crowd of men and women hurrying through the basement tunnels underneath the Muse that drone intel hadn’t managed to pick up. Javert tried to get a couple of messages off as he went, but the signal was even worse underground.

They finally surfaced into the open. The sun was setting, but Javert recognized the immense, dilapidated walls of the deserted mill, the factory and buildings and abandoned storehouse stretching away from them. Javert followed Combeferre into the storehouse, and though the lighting was shot to shit he could see the walls were lined with scanner-blocking devices, and explosives.

Making sure he wasn’t followed, Javert ducked into an empty corridor, and relayed the message to the precinct: that there were maybe fifty anarchists holed up in the Corinthian feed mill, and that serious fucking shit was going down.

 _Staying put, will try to find out more_ , Javert sent, which was when the wrist-band screen came alive and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The low-res projector on the civilian device shouldn’t have been able to reproduce Rivette’s image this well, but there his deputy was all the same, filling the corridor with his almost-solid figure and earnest face.

"You have to leave now," Rivette whispered. "Your equipment’s been compromised, these guys can read this signal. Go into the open, where one of the drones can pick you up."

 _“Goddamnit!”_ Javert hissed, slapping at his screen to switch it off. Rivette’s form blinked out of sight like it was cut off at the legs, and a hard fist clamped down on Javert’s wrist.

“Detective … Javert, is it?” 

It was the bearded leader, the smirking kid at his heel, and burly lieutenants at his side. The big guys crowded into the corridor and pinned his arms behind his back while the leader divested Javert of his weapon and his wrist-band, and then threw the latter on the floor. 

Javert felt a ridiculous pang as his one connection to his deputy was ground into dust under the leader’s heel.

“Not sure what your plan was, Detective, but let me assure you: drones and androids and other tools of the kleptocracy won’t help you. You’re now at the mercy of the free men of this fine state.”

*

The plan, such as Javert could piece together, involved a coordinated effort between various cells of insurgents across the city and the state, located completely off the grid. Lists of demands had been drawn up, and hostages had been taken, including the Paris mayor himself.

Javert spent the evening tied spread-eagled to a table in one of the rooms in the tunnels underneath the Corinthian. He was hot and dirty, he needed badly to piss, and—surprisingly— he felt utterly alone. 

He strained to listen for sounds of fighting above ground, to little avail. He heard his captors’ conversations, and once there was a commotion involving shouting and running, but there was otherwise no sign of battle or rescue. 

He supposed that, given the other more important hostages in need of rescue, one undercover cop dumb enough to let himself get captured wouldn’t be a high priority.

He did wonder why there hadn’t been an attempt by the precinct to protect its one of its own. After all, Rivette knew where he was, and would have given the alarm hours ago, possibly before the hostage-taking had even started. 

Unless someone at the precinct had wanted the hostage-taking to happen. Or had wanted him to be caught. 

_Your equipment’s been compromised, these guys can read this signal._

Javert had thought this meant that the rebels’ tech had bypassed the lousy anti-tracking security on his civilian wrist-band. But had Rivette actually meant the precinct had issued him with faulty equipment?

Javert had no clue. It made no sense for him to be the subject of any internal conspiracy. He might not be a team player, but that wouldn’t make him a target. 

When the door finally opened, at first he thought the figure in paramilitary uniform was coming to his rescue at last. But then, like a sucker-punch to the gut, he realized it was none other than Jean Valjean in disguise, the black leather clinging deceivingly to his body.

Valjean, his enemy. The mayor whom he’d grudgingly worked with, the fugitive whom he’d longed to bring to justice, the man whom he’d hunted for so many years. Putting his hands on him. Taking him out to the alley to be shot like a dog.

When Valjean cut him loose instead, he was so stupefied that he stumbled and almost fell. 

“Is this another one of your tricks?”

“Not a trick,” the man said, looking as dignified in his fake uniform as a real cop might. He gestured urgently towards the horizon, where dawn had started to break. “You’re free. No conditions attached.”

Javert had to steady himself against a nearby wall. He couldn’t seem to catch his balance.

“Why?” he managed. “After everything I’ve done to you?”

“I won’t kill an innocent man,” Valjean said. “And I’ve never blamed you for anything you did. You were just doing your duty, Detective.”

Valjean didn’t understand. It hadn’t been Javert’s duty to fantasize about him a thousand times over: had made him get on his knees, to beat him with his club, to come all over his face. And he had done those things to other men who weren’t Valjean. To Rivette, who deserved it even less.

Even more shockingly, Valjean gave him his address. “I’m done running. If I leave this place alive, you can come looking for me there. I won’t resist arrest.”

Javert couldn’t believe his ears. Why would this enemy save his life, and then promise to turn himself in? _Every moment he’s free, he’s a danger to society,_ he’d told Rivette not two days ago, and had believed it then. But he couldn’t believe it now, not after what Valjean had just done. 

He staggered out of the Corinthian feed mill complex as if his world was falling to pieces around him.

*

On the outskirts of the city, there was an old bridge that ran over the wasteland which used to be part of the Northeast Texas Trail. Many people had climbed onto the parapet at the edge of the guardrail to stand where Javert stood now, looking down at the uneven boulders, the deep gulley carved by the Clarksville chemical plant explosion, the creek still tainted by the remnants of industrial waste. 

In the distance, the old-fashioned bells of Springlake Baptist Church struck midnight. 

Javert stood on the bridge as if on the cliff’s edge of his destroyed world. Above him was pitch black sky, no stars; below, civilization was in ruins. He’d always believed he’d staked his life on Justice and the law, and now he understood how badly he’d failed.

When Javert had finally managed to return to the precinct, the Superintendent had sent him back out into the field again. The city had descended into chaos — firefights in the alleys, districts set on fire from drone strikes, cops in riot gear patrolling the streets. The mayor and some of his top officials had been killed in a botched rescue attempt, a pattern that was apparently repeating itself across the state and the country. Gisquet’s golfing buddy Cass Perrier, now acting mayor, had installed himself in City Hall, from which he’d been issuing press statements that played on a loop on terminals across the city. There had been no sightings of Claquesous, and apparently no one in the P.D. had been tasked to follow up. 

And Rivette himself had been nowhere to be found — he wasn’t on the grid, and couldn’t be summoned up on the precinct terminals, or his wrist-pad, when Javert retrieved it from his deserted apartment. 

Operating on zero sleep, Javert went back to the Corinthian to discover a pile of charred bodies, none of which had been Valjean’s. 

Instead, later that evening, Valjean had found him, down near the tunnels looking for Claquesous and Thenardier. Valjean had persuaded him to help one of the anarchists, a kid who looked barely old enough to shave. After they’d rescued the boy, Valjean had obediently surrendered himself to Javert, like he said he would. 

And instead of arresting him, like any self-respecting cop, Javert had found himself getting into his squad car and driving away. 

He’d driven up and down the town’s highways, aimlessly at first, winter growing in his breast, until he reached this bridge on the edge of town. He’d gotten out of the car, killed the lights, and went to stand on the precipice. 

Jean Valjean had never deserved punishment. Authority had thrown him in the trash and he’d risen above it. He’d saved Javert’s life. And yet punishment was what the Law required. Javert couldn’t betray the institutions he served, even if they might have betrayed him first.

He looked down at his weapon in its holster; he looked down at the sheer drop over the rusting iron. He’d never done a thing by halves, and wouldn’t start now.

He was startled out of his stupor by the sound of an engine coming up the I-270 highway. He jerked his head up to see the glare of headlights aimed right at him. There was no way to tell if it was friend or foe. 

Automatically, he drew his weapon and aimed it at the vehicle. 

“Stop! Police!” 

He didn’t know if the passengers could hear him, but the car pulled to a halt in front of him. Two male figures got out on either side.

One of the men was Jean Valjean. He’d gotten out of the car with his hands raised — an automatic reaction to a gun being pointed at him — and he crossed slowly to stand in front of its headlights, where Javert could keep an eye on him. 

The other man, though — Javert was so surprised he almost lost his balance on the ledge —

A tallish, thinnish man, all sad eyes and anachronistic moustache, intimately familiar after weeks and months spent together. Instead of the antique navy wool uniform, he wore jeans and a blue hoodie with a French crest on its lapel. 

He moved more slowly than Valjean did. His boots crunched solidly on the damp tarmac; he shut the car door with a resounding thud.

“Please don’t shoot, Detective. It’s me. It’s Rivette.”

The voice with its slight French accent sounded exactly like it had the last time Javert had heard it, across a bad connection on a civilian wrist-band in the heart of the enemy camp. 

Javert holstered his weapon with some difficulty, because his fingers had started to shake. He climbed off the ledge, and then his legs couldn’t hold him up and he folded to the kerbside.

Rivette rushed over, Valjean following; together, they knelt on either side of him. Rivette took hold of Javert’s shoulders. His grip was warm, solid, undeniably real.

“How,” Javert got out, after a while.

Rivette said, in the diffident manner that Javert had become so used to, “The A.I. raised the alarm before he was shut down. When I got his last download, I got on the first commercial flight out here and came to look for you.” 

Javert must have stared uncomprehendingly at him, because he stopped and said, hesitantly, “I’m the deputy chief of the Paris Prefecture’s technology department? I built the A.I. we sent you?” 

Then he flushed, belatedly realizing the source of Javert’s conflict. “That is to say, I built it on a template based on myself.”

“No kidding,” Javert managed. He would never have believed it, but civilization was in ruins around him and he had only minutes before been reconsidering his own place in it. It shouldn’t be surprising that he had witnesses to the end of the world, and that the witnesses just happened to be this man he had hunted and secretly longed for and so terribly wronged, and the man who had been the template for the A.I. that had been his only friend.

On that front: “How did you find me? Both of you,” Javert added, with a glance at Valjean, who had taken the time to change his clothes after the sewers, but still had dirt on one smooth-shaven cheek.

Rivette shrugged. “Monsieur Jean was standing outside the station house waiting to turn himself in. I recognized him from the A.I.’s research. And it was a simple matter to hack into your precinct’s grid and follow the tracker on your car.”

“That’s a felony offence, deputy,” Javert said, automatically, and Rivette flushed, though he didn’t look at all repentant.

“I had a good reason. Your techs were told to shut down the A.I. and make it look like the failsafe engaged. But I could tell what really happened. Something's going on with the Patron Minette gang and your Monsieur Superintendent and the deputy mayor, and the A.I. suspected you were becoming an inconvenience to them.”

Javert was at a complete loss for words. He had no clue what the A.I. might have discovered, why the higher-ups in the precinct might suddenly want him dead — what the deal was between Gisquet and Claquesous, how the new acting mayor was involved. Whether the entire system was corrupt after all, like the anarchists believed.

It wasn’t as if he needed another reason to put an end to it all.

Still, now the real Rivette was unexpectedly here — having put on hold his career with the French police to rescue Javert from this conspiracy within the Paris P.D. and City Hall — not to mention Valjean, who needed to be stopped from surrendering himself to Gisquet, he had other things to worry about.

Belatedly, he realized the danger they were all in. 

His head hurt, he couldn’t stop goddamned shivering. “We need to get out of here.” 

“My car is an airport rental,” Rivette said, picking up on his train of thought like the A.I. always had. “It’s still on the grid, though, so we should leave it behind afterwards.”

“We can’t go back to my place,” Javert said. “They’ll be watching it, same as they can track my car.” 

Valjean said, slowly, “I have a place that’s off the grid. You’re both welcome there.”

Javert wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but there was no other safe house he could think of. 

With Rivette’s and Valjean’s help, he got to his feet. He took off his leather coat and his wrist-pad, climbed back onto the ledge, and threw both off the side of the bridge. 

All three of them watched as the uniform and the device vanished into the deep gulf, out of sight. With any luck, the drop and the river and the chemicals would be enough to convince anyone who came casually looking that their owner had come to the same tragic end.

Not an hour before, Javert had been ready to give it all up. And in a way he had; his old life, as he had always known it, was at an end. Here was a new one — off the grid, and with the two men in the world who were, somehow, willing to help him live it.

They got into Rivette’s car and headed back to town.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to Kainosite for the rigorous, hilarious beta <3


End file.
